Jeepers Creepers (1939 animated film)
| Jeepers Creepers | |
|---|---|
| Looney Tunes (Porky Pig) series | |
| Directed by | Robert Clampett |
| Produced by | Leon Schlesinger |
| Story by | Ernest Gee |
| Voices by | Mel Blanc |
| Music by | Carl W. Stalling |
| Animation by | Vive Risto |
| Distributed by |
Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
| Release date(s) | September 23, 1939 (USA) |
| Color process | Black and White |
| Running time | 8 minutes |
| Language | English |
Jeepers Creepers is a 1939 Looney Tunes animated short starring Porky Pig. It was directed by Robert Clampett.
Plot
Porky is a police officer, who is in a police car that is named 6 7/8. He gets a call from his chief to go investigate goings-on at a haunted house. The house is haunted to the core, and the fun loving ghost plays a series of pranks on the unsuspecting pig. As Porky knocks on the door to enter the haunted house, the ghost does a lady voice "Come in." Porky enters, already frightened.
He enters again, the ghost places Frogs into a pair of shoes to look like a person walking, as Porky doesn't notice, the laces of the shoes get stuck to a coat hanger pole then rips off a curtain to make it look like a person with a cloak on. It immediately scares him and then the ghost scares him. Porky runs upstairs and lands in the ghost's arms with realizing, until that famous line comes as the ghost says it very goopy. "What the matter baby?".
Porky is finally scared out of the house, but he has the last laugh when his back-firing car leaves the ghost in blackface (and the ghost doing a Rochester imitation).
Cast
Edited versions
- As with many Black and white produced Looney Tunes shorts, Jeepers Creepers has been colorized twice for television, redrawn in 1968 and by computer in 1990. When the short aired on TV, the actual editing of the ending (where the ghost, after getting exhaust smoke blown on him, is left in blackface commenting "My, oh my! Tattletale Gray!") has been done in different ways:
- When it aired in syndication, the redrawn version has the ending altered to have the ghost in purple face so the blackface joke would be less offensive.
- When shown on Nickelodeon, the cartoon ended via fake iris-out after the exhaust on Porky's car blew in the ghost's face.
- When it aired on Fox as part of The Merrie Melodies Show, the cartoon ended via fake fade-out after Porky drove his car past the ghost.
- When it aired on Cartoon Network (with the exception of the versions shown on Late Night Black & White and The Bob Clampett Show), the cartoon ended with a black-out as Porky's car blows exhaust in the ghost's face. The computer colorized version, when shown with the ghost's blackface, the ghost was left in Black and White.
Analysis
The scene where Porky runs away from the ghost and runs up multiple flights of stairs only to end up in the arms of the perpetrator and get spooked again and then runs down the stairs was reused; as seen in The Case of the Stuttering Pig.
Sources
Beck, Jerry; Will Friedwald (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.